Chapter 6. Three Problems with Wanting To Be Honored The love of being honored is the leadership trait in the ancient Greek world that most resembles high-voltage electricity. As we have seen (pp. 76–77), it is a primary source of Cyrus’ energy and enthusiasm for leadership, but it may also interfere with the […]
Chapter 5. Five Problems with Loving to Learn Prima facie the love of learning should be the least problematic of any leadership trait. Obviously all leaders need to know things and pay attention to things in order to help their followers, but this is not all that a love of learning in […]
Chapter 4. Six Problemswith Loving Humanity It is one thing to observe how a leader is portrayed with fundamental and derivative traits; it is still more important to determine how well these traits actually translate into effective leadership. In the next three chapters we consider the implications of Cyrus’ philanthrôpia, philomatheia, and […]
Chapter 3. On the Fundamentality of Philanthrôpia, Philomatheia, and Philotîmia To determine the fundamentality of Cyrus’ superlative love of humanity, learning, and being honored, I mean to ask the following: to what extent are these three traits either the cause of other leadership traits or the foundation for them to be developed? […]
Chapter 2. Curiosity, Aptitude, and Intense Awareness As we have seen, Cyrus’ philanthrôpia and philotîmia are intimately connected. How does Cyrus’ philomatheia (love of learning) fit in? Our investigation will entail a survey of Xenophon’s treatments of learning elsewhere, especially in the Oeconomicus, Memorabilia, and Anabasis, but we will begin with the […]
Chapter 1. Philanthrôpia and Philotîmia as Reciprocal Fondness I begin this study of Cyrus’ three superlative character traits with an early and seemingly simple passage in the Cyropaedia. Xenophon describes how the twelve-year-old Cyrus wins over his Medan contemporaries (hêlikotai), then their fathers, and then his grandfather, Astyages. Both the love of […]
Introduction [In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{69|70}” indicates where p. 69 of the printed version ends and p. 70 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made elsewhere to the printed […]
Acknowledgements The following study is to some extent the result of a long interest in ancient leadership and the emotions. Thus I owe a debt of gratitude to many more friends and mentors than I have space to mention here, including to Dick Gerberding, who converted me to Classics from a budding […]
Bibliography Aalders H. Wzn., G. J. D. 1978. “Die Meropes des Theopomp.” Historia 27:317–327. Abernathy, C. L. 2003. Akribeia: Isocrates and the Politics of Persuasion. MA thesis, University of Virginia. Acosta-Hughes, B., and S. A. Stephens. 2011. Callimachus in Context: From Plato to the Augustan […]
Conclusion: Isocrateanism in the Renaissance The controversies and contests of the Isocratean period left their mark, directly and indirectly, on later European culture. In the immediate, Hellenistic, wake of this period, we may well wonder whether the names “Isocrates,” “Plato,” and “Aristotle” still carried with them traces of their significance in the […]